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Transparence of the World
Throughout WWII, French poet Jean Follain wrote poems that revisit the provinces of personal and cultural history. His quietly phrased, brief devotions are -described as "miniatures," yet are monumental, capturing the pressure of history upon daily moments. By reducing the world to its small objects, every detail, every image becomes imbued with meaning. This bilingual volume, celebrating the centennial of Jean Follain’s birth, is translated by W.S. Merwin, who writes in his "Follain’s concern is finally with the mystery of the present—the mystery which gives the recalled concrete details their form, at once luminous and removed, when they are seen at last in their places, as they seem to be in the best of his poems."
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 14, 2025
2nd reading
July 18, 2012
Follain writes the kind of poetry that you just want to revisit over and over again---each reading unearths some buried meaning that seems not to have been there before. Then again, reading this book before attempting to work on my own poems is akin to staring at Padma Lakshmi, sticking my face in uncooked hamburger and then trying to figure out whether or not I'm pretty.
October 22, 2011
Not all of these poems touched me, they were for the most part too cerebral, but those that did were like a blow to the heart.
Like this one:
The Pyramid
Rue Saint-Honore, in homage
the paupers raised to King Louis the Sixteenth
a pyramid of snow
and to see it he made his way through the crowd
where cut-throats and vampires were hiding
night was about to fall
the evening was weaving its frosts
on a few humble girls
a somber beauty appeared.
King Louis walking to the scaffold
in his white coat
remembered a winter's shadows.
and this one:
Death
From the bone of animals
the factory had made these buttons
which fastened
a bodice over the bust
of a gorgeous working-girl
when she fell
one of the buttons came off in the night
and the water of the gutters took it
and laid it down
in a private garden
with a crumbling plaster statue
Pomona
naked and laughmg
Like this one:
The Pyramid
Rue Saint-Honore, in homage
the paupers raised to King Louis the Sixteenth
a pyramid of snow
and to see it he made his way through the crowd
where cut-throats and vampires were hiding
night was about to fall
the evening was weaving its frosts
on a few humble girls
a somber beauty appeared.
King Louis walking to the scaffold
in his white coat
remembered a winter's shadows.
and this one:
Death
From the bone of animals
the factory had made these buttons
which fastened
a bodice over the bust
of a gorgeous working-girl
when she fell
one of the buttons came off in the night
and the water of the gutters took it
and laid it down
in a private garden
with a crumbling plaster statue
Pomona
naked and laughmg
March 17, 2008
Of the 20th century French poets I've read, Jean Follain is my favorite. His poems are rich, image-heavy miniatures that have seemingly no limitations of perspective. They travel underground and through battlefields, crossing public squares and private thresholds. Follain's speaker usually relates the poems in third person, though he often addresses the reader personally. The simplicity and power of his work will be accessible to any reader.
May 3, 2025
For reasons, most of which are ‘some’, I dreamt of going out to dinner with this Monsieur Follain and found he intones his every thought as if it were one of these short poems. It all slips out and lands flat on the table between bread basket and wine.
“How is your pot-au-feu?”
“Conspiracy. The mirrors reflect swords and trophies she is a christian divests herself of her frothy gown all clasps ribbons knots then listens with her whole body tensed to the life in her but the souls of the conspiracy are watching from behind pillars and the water carrier’s sudden cry shatters a pagan silence”
“You don’t say? Religion can and is a bit much with all that.”
But he does, he does say. He keeps on saying, and it is a little clever, and i shudder with disconnections untill, looking up from my increasingly mid black meat civet de cerf, slap him full in the face in an effort to shut him up and leave him to pay the bill on his lonesome.
He watches me storming off, a tropical cyclone looming vast under a low sky, and looking on he says, “Cadences. The sea remains as grey as the tombstone the regiment madwoman re-enters its building with words that have no thread but the letter is inscribed on the forgotten book. A sound fails threshing thin wheat in muffled cadences comes in evening over the warmed earth unthreatened by rain.”
I’m a well known madwoman, which may explain many things, however, i imagine he is talking about himself here.
“How is your pot-au-feu?”
“Conspiracy. The mirrors reflect swords and trophies she is a christian divests herself of her frothy gown all clasps ribbons knots then listens with her whole body tensed to the life in her but the souls of the conspiracy are watching from behind pillars and the water carrier’s sudden cry shatters a pagan silence”
“You don’t say? Religion can and is a bit much with all that.”
But he does, he does say. He keeps on saying, and it is a little clever, and i shudder with disconnections untill, looking up from my increasingly mid black meat civet de cerf, slap him full in the face in an effort to shut him up and leave him to pay the bill on his lonesome.
He watches me storming off, a tropical cyclone looming vast under a low sky, and looking on he says, “Cadences. The sea remains as grey as the tombstone the regiment madwoman re-enters its building with words that have no thread but the letter is inscribed on the forgotten book. A sound fails threshing thin wheat in muffled cadences comes in evening over the warmed earth unthreatened by rain.”
I’m a well known madwoman, which may explain many things, however, i imagine he is talking about himself here.
August 6, 2011
french poetry that i can actually read in the original! given my rather tenuous grasp of the language: amazing!
i really like this poetry collection - his poetry is very simple, very grounded and very ... still. with his poems, (my favourites: 'asia', 'domestic life', 'dawn', 'death of a ferret', 'father and daughter', 'dusk', 'the students' dog', 'death'... oh wow, i'm just listing every third poem, oops!) you get these extremely crisp, distilled images of country life and how humans/nature are bound together.
i really like this poetry collection - his poetry is very simple, very grounded and very ... still. with his poems, (my favourites: 'asia', 'domestic life', 'dawn', 'death of a ferret', 'father and daughter', 'dusk', 'the students' dog', 'death'... oh wow, i'm just listing every third poem, oops!) you get these extremely crisp, distilled images of country life and how humans/nature are bound together.
July 8, 2009
interesting to see the difference between Follain's voice:
line-broken verse (here) and the prose poem voice.
the prose-poem voice is usually quieter. slower. more luminescent.
the line-broken poems accerelate. carry more energy. roll forward.
they're beautiful. and wonderful.
the translations are a bit stilted. or perhaps that's faithfulness.
and, at the end of the day, i'd read the prose poems instead of these.
but,....
line-broken verse (here) and the prose poem voice.
the prose-poem voice is usually quieter. slower. more luminescent.
the line-broken poems accerelate. carry more energy. roll forward.
they're beautiful. and wonderful.
the translations are a bit stilted. or perhaps that's faithfulness.
and, at the end of the day, i'd read the prose poems instead of these.
but,....
Read
December 17, 2007a terrific poet
January 26, 2022
The chorister crippled all summer
beside the manure piles and roses
and Leopold who slept in the stable
because of his canker-sores
and all the others
there they are in the valley of Jehoshaphat
and the wearer of vestments sees without understanding
the plants spoken of in the psalms;
all the villages are in heaven
gathered around the steeple.
* * *
It happens that one pronounces
a few words just oneself
alone on this strange earth
then the small white flower
the pebble like all those that went before
the sprig of stubble
find themselves re-united
at the foot of the gate
which one opens slowly
to enter the house of clay
while chairs, table, cupboard
blaze in a sun of glory.
* * *
The man of dark politics
in a gold-buttoned boudoir
watched the untying of a black chignon
the hair rolled out like a torrent
in the torrent roses tumbled
and in one rose the mute insect
would not abdicate its existence
and clambered alone slowly
on the trembling petal of the flower
plucked from the ravines of death
in the course of a long day.
* * *
When the carriage thief
meets the horse thief
they eat slowly,
the sauce on their cracked plates
gradually congeals
they see in the mist
the equestrian statue in the square
by the granite stirrups
larger than life
couples exchange
their clear words.
* * *
It is a purplish stone
loose in its cement
that cracks in the frost
but the rest will hold up
so the simple man
who at every sunrise
turns the key in the lock
walks around his flower-bed
throws a bone to the black dog
will die alone stuck against his wall
seeing columns of smoke
on the fleeing horizons.
* * *
Back and front of the house
are not lit at the same moment
the shadow of pale foliage
falls on a body
but a time may be coming
when only the rock will be left
under the rain
and no flesh at all shudder
as now at the shootings.
* * *
Around stones called precious
which only their own
dust can wear down
the eaters of venison
carve in silence
their black meat
the trees on the horizon
imitate in outline
a giant sentence.
beside the manure piles and roses
and Leopold who slept in the stable
because of his canker-sores
and all the others
there they are in the valley of Jehoshaphat
and the wearer of vestments sees without understanding
the plants spoken of in the psalms;
all the villages are in heaven
gathered around the steeple.
- Last Judgement, for André Mora, pg. 13
* * *
It happens that one pronounces
a few words just oneself
alone on this strange earth
then the small white flower
the pebble like all those that went before
the sprig of stubble
find themselves re-united
at the foot of the gate
which one opens slowly
to enter the house of clay
while chairs, table, cupboard
blaze in a sun of glory.
- Speech Alone, pg. 31
* * *
The man of dark politics
in a gold-buttoned boudoir
watched the untying of a black chignon
the hair rolled out like a torrent
in the torrent roses tumbled
and in one rose the mute insect
would not abdicate its existence
and clambered alone slowly
on the trembling petal of the flower
plucked from the ravines of death
in the course of a long day.
- Existence, pg. 43
* * *
When the carriage thief
meets the horse thief
they eat slowly,
the sauce on their cracked plates
gradually congeals
they see in the mist
the equestrian statue in the square
by the granite stirrups
larger than life
couples exchange
their clear words.
- Fraternities, pg. 77
* * *
It is a purplish stone
loose in its cement
that cracks in the frost
but the rest will hold up
so the simple man
who at every sunrise
turns the key in the lock
walks around his flower-bed
throws a bone to the black dog
will die alone stuck against his wall
seeing columns of smoke
on the fleeing horizons.
- Wall, pg. 85
* * *
Back and front of the house
are not lit at the same moment
the shadow of pale foliage
falls on a body
but a time may be coming
when only the rock will be left
under the rain
and no flesh at all shudder
as now at the shootings.
- Another Time, pg. 95
* * *
Around stones called precious
which only their own
dust can wear down
the eaters of venison
carve in silence
their black meat
the trees on the horizon
imitate in outline
a giant sentence.
- Black Meat, pg. 117
January 19, 2025
Follain is unbelievable, he can seemingly throw together a handful of images and end up with some of the most beautiful and affecting poetry I've ever read. Some highlights: Life, The Tragic in Time, October Thoughts.
July 30, 2020
The poems in this collection are often contained in a single sentence, and function as one long camera shot following a path of concrete objects through to some deeper significance. To cite just one example, the poem "Life (Vie)":
A child is born
in a vast landscape
half a century later
he is simply a dead soldier
and that was the man
whom one saw appear
and set down on the ground a whole
heavy sack of apples
two or three of which rolled
a sound among the sounds of a world
where the bird sang
on the stone of the door-sill.
Here you have many of the major themes and motifs of the collection: war, mortality, doorways, gravity, nature, food, domestic scenes. They often harken back to an earlier time, or fluctuate between present and past.
Follain's poems are in solid hands with W.S. Merwin as translator, who makes adjustments only when needed to maintain the concreteness of the poet's language, as in the end of the poem "Cadences" where "par un soir que la pluie/ ne menace le terre/ doucement réchauffée" becomes "...in the evening/ over the warmed earth/ unthreatened by rain." Merwin makes few alterations like this, but intuits that ending on "warmed" sounds strange in English and loses the impact of the description of nature, so that the line endings become more solid ("earth"/"rain") and in line with the overall effect of Follain's poetry.
There's a distance or indifference that adds weight to the work, as in the almost anti-pastoral tone of the final poem in the collection, "Thief (Larron)," which begins:
The cows' hearts beat in the meadow
a man comes to steal their milk
walking in the cool of the dew
he neither loves nor hates [...]
The thief is impartial, like a good narrator, like our poet (?), with enough observation and empathy to record the heartbeat of the cows, but enough wisdom to reserve further interpretation of the scene.
A child is born
in a vast landscape
half a century later
he is simply a dead soldier
and that was the man
whom one saw appear
and set down on the ground a whole
heavy sack of apples
two or three of which rolled
a sound among the sounds of a world
where the bird sang
on the stone of the door-sill.
Here you have many of the major themes and motifs of the collection: war, mortality, doorways, gravity, nature, food, domestic scenes. They often harken back to an earlier time, or fluctuate between present and past.
Follain's poems are in solid hands with W.S. Merwin as translator, who makes adjustments only when needed to maintain the concreteness of the poet's language, as in the end of the poem "Cadences" where "par un soir que la pluie/ ne menace le terre/ doucement réchauffée" becomes "...in the evening/ over the warmed earth/ unthreatened by rain." Merwin makes few alterations like this, but intuits that ending on "warmed" sounds strange in English and loses the impact of the description of nature, so that the line endings become more solid ("earth"/"rain") and in line with the overall effect of Follain's poetry.
There's a distance or indifference that adds weight to the work, as in the almost anti-pastoral tone of the final poem in the collection, "Thief (Larron)," which begins:
The cows' hearts beat in the meadow
a man comes to steal their milk
walking in the cool of the dew
he neither loves nor hates [...]
The thief is impartial, like a good narrator, like our poet (?), with enough observation and empathy to record the heartbeat of the cows, but enough wisdom to reserve further interpretation of the scene.
June 25, 2007
best poetry ever.
January 17, 2008
this poet died too young, but he left us these gems.
August 23, 2010
Not earth-shattering, but solid and well-observed.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews